ARTHUR EDDINGTON

Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter.

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.

Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.

We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.

Who will observe the observers?

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control.

We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.

Our model of Nature should not be like a building-a handsome structure for the populace to admire, until in the course of time some one takes away a corner stone and the edifice comes toppling down. It should be like an engine with movable parts. We need not fix the position of any one lever; that is to be adjusted from time to time as the latest observations indicate. The aim of the theorist is to know the train of wheels which the lever sets in motion-that binding of the parts which is the soul of the engine.

The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrodinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.

It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

An electron is no more (and no less) hypothetical than a star. Nowadays we count electrons one by one in a Geiger counter, as we count the stars one by one on a photographic plate.